Jung's notion: The future is prepared in the Unconscious

Rereading Aion and Memories, Dreams, Reflections---a book that I read in my early twenties---it occurs to me how deep was MDR's influence on so many people. I suppose that this book may have contributed to many many people diving into their mythic, symbolic, dream, vision and spiritual life. One subject that has interested me a great deal is that of 'causation': What has caused me to be what I am? To understand things as I understand them? To act in the way that I did? Obviously, quite 'archetypal' stuff! I suppose that for many of us---as children of the post-war era (WW2 that is)---each of our lives in this interior sense have spun out of the influence of certain persons, some who may be known to us and some who remain unknown and invisible. Isn't that a curious thing? That one's life could have been significantly influenced---altered, changed, bettered, worsened---by a person or persons that are invisible to one?

I came across an interesting idea in the chapter called The Tower:

"I also did not know---no more than, even to-day, it is generally known---that the future is unconsciously prepared long in advance and therefor can be guessed by clairvoyants. Thus, when the news arrived of the crowning of Kaiser Wilhelm 1 at Versailles, Jakob Burckhardt exclaimed, 'That is the doom of Germany.' "

Recently, and I assume this may be true for many who read here, it has come to light that there are forces that have the power and the interest to peer into the most secret recesses of our personal lives. I am referring naturally to the revelations brought out by Edward Snowden and which today are on the front page of the NY Times and The Guardian. I have been following these articles with an almost morbid curiosity. Well, not perhaps 'morbid' in the precise sense of the word, but 'glued' if you will to read the articles and then all the reader comments which often seem more interesting. We have lost faith in the present by all standards. This much seems true. This is pretty intense stuff. The implications extend quite far not only politically but in other areas too.

I guess the question I have, if it is a 'question', is what is your sense of what is on our horizon? If indeed the future is written in an unconscious domain is it not 'virtually probable' that the tone of life on Earth will darken before it gets lighter? If it gets lighter? It seems that a crisis rears up with every passing week. But that these crises are of a different order. They seem (to me anyway) to have even more 'content'.

Please tell me your thoughts. (I have more to say but will hold it back for now).

Replies to This Discussion

My acquaintance described to me when we were children a potentially funny situation and said something like: “Say something funny about it. Don’t think, just say it.” That perception from other people that I often say funny things and/or put other things in a totally insane context has been following me since I was very, very young. When I have one of these moments, others either laugh hysterically, look at me with that confused facial expression, or just stop talking to me.

There is a prophecy that someone very similar to me will change a paradigm. I drop a “fecal bomb” here and there that I am Deus Ex Machina or at least his very good friend, just to observe other people’s reactions.